Fundamentalist religion is here to stay, an interfaith conference of Christians, Jews and Muslims in Melbourne was told yesterday.

The Age reports that Professor Des Cahill, head of intercultural studies at RMIT University, told the Abraham Conference that a new Christianity was emerging that would be much more conservative.

He said fundamentalism was "religion's revenge against secularism", a minority protest and rage at the threatened displacement of religion.

"We have entered a more religiously competitive world," he said. "The best strategy is to encourage moderates rather than retreat into aggressive secularism, as in France."

Professor Cahill is co-author of a major study of religious diversity in Australia for the Commonwealth Government, to be released next month.

He said there are benign forms of Christian fundamentalism, which wrap themselves in a cocoon. But in the 1970s more militant forms emerged that engaged with society in a religious nationalistic crusade.